"Google has released a research paper that suggests C++ is the best-performing programming language in the market. The internet giant implemented a compact algorithm in four languages - C++, Java, Scala and its own programming language Go - and then benchmarked results to find 'factors of difference'."

Performance characteristics not the result of language syntax so much as the implementation of the compilers and supporting libraries.

Certain language characteristics have obvious performance consequences, for instance java, scala, go are all garbage collected which certainly comes with a performance penalty.

Another point is that some language implementations (eiffel) compile down to C and then are compiled/optimized by the C compiler.

Eiffel wasn't measured here was it? Nor was any other language (I know of Vala) which compiles to C?

Either way, I doubt there was any news to anyone that C++ was faster than Java, Scala and Go. As for the compilers of these languages, certainly Go has a very immature compiler suite given it's young age and it still being heavily in development, Gccgo (which relies on GCC's backend for code optimization) is said by the Go devs to produce much faster code than the official compilers.